Yoshi and the Mysterious Book

It's been a long time since I've played a game more family-friendly than Yoshi and the Mysterious Book. This is a platform game with virtually no difficulty, as you can neither die nor take damage, and there are no enemies to watch out for. Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is a game aimed at younger players, but it is also likely to be a game that divides opinion.

A huge book with a rainbow monocle and a big moustache, known as Mr Encyclopedia, or simply Mr E to his friends, falls from the sky and lands right where Yoshi and his other Yoshi friends live. Mr E has always been curious about what is actually written on his pages and, as a book, as we know, cannot read itself, Mr E asks the curious Yoshis if they would like to help him explore his pages.

Of course they're happy to, and you now set off to explore a series of different themed pages/worlds, inhabited by a variety of mysterious animals. Each animal has its own level, and the levels are centred around the individual animal in terms of gameplay. For example, there might be a frog with a large round mouth that can make huge soap bubbles, which Yoshi can jump into and thus float up to high platforms that he would otherwise not have been able to reach. That is why the level is designed very vertically. It might also be a large carnivorous plant that Yoshi can ride on its back, and that level is filled with butterflies, various insects and other things that the hungry plant can pounce on with Yoshi's help. The levels are thus designed to fit perfectly with the animal in focus and its special characteristics.

You have to figure out for yourself what each animal's special ability is, what you can use it for, and what other creative activities the course has to offer. The game doesn't help, as you have to figure it out for yourself by exploring, playing and being creative. It's easy enough to work out what the animal's special ability is, but what does the carnivorous plant like, for example (apart from butterflies)? What happens when you jump on it? What happens when you throw it - for example, into a lake full of fish? What happens when you throw a chilli into its big mouth? What does it actually taste like? What actually happens when you hide in the tall grass? What happens if it eats the little happy clouds floating around? These things, and many, many others, you have to figure out for yourself, and that's the whole appeal of Yoshi and the Mysterious Book: you have to play your way to all the answers.

In each level, there are plenty of things to explore and try to find - younger players might be content to find just a handful of these things and then move on, as there is virtually no progression in the game. You do, however, earn stars for every discovery you make, and these stars help unlock new worlds; but the game is very generous with these stars, so it doesn't take long before a large proportion of the different worlds have been unlocked. If you're a more experienced player, on the other hand, you can try to find everything in the levels - and that requires you to be both patient and quite resourceful, but it's not something that can really keep an adult hooked.

Several of the levels (and their associated creatures) work quite well, but there are also some that work far less well. The carnivorous plant mentioned earlier is really fun to play with, as is a comical angler creature, and there is also a small, feisty animal that turns redder and redder the longer you carry it, before it eventually explodes, which is also quite entertaining.

On the other hand, there are others that are far more ordinary, and some of them are downright boring or frustrating to play - for example, some confused seagulls that are neither particularly inventive nor particularly fun to play with. So it's a bit of a mixed bag on the gameplay front, but fortunately you can always jump to another level without it affecting your progress in the game.

Yoshi's moves are largely the same as in other games featuring the little green dinosaur; he can eat items that give him a supply of dino eggs to throw, he can jump and glide over long distances with his familiar "Flutter Jump", and he can stomp hard on the ground to smash crates and other objects. As a new feature, however, he can also pick up objects or various animals and carry them on his back - and in doing so, he can make use of these animals' abilities, which is the central mechanic of Yoshi and the Mysterious Book.

The game has a rather distinctive look, as the graphics almost resemble a hand-drawn comic, and although the style is quite consistent, it never really captured my imagination. On the other hand, the design of Mr E's book is really lovely, as are the many sketch drawings of the discoveries you make along the way, as they are written into the pages of Mr E's book. The audio is, unfortunately, rather mediocre; the soundtrack is repeated far too often, and the sound Yoshi makes when performing his 'Flutter Jump' can drive you mad after a while.

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book isn't really my sort of game, but I can see - and appreciate - what Nintendo is trying to do here: namely, to create a game for younger players in which virtually all barriers have been removed. The gameplay has its ups and downs; it's a game that encourages play and exploration, but the non-existent difficulty level will likely divide opinion.

More experienced players CAN certainly play this, but the challenge consists solely of finding everything in every level, and you have to be prepared for the fact that the game has virtually no difficulty level if you choose to dive into Yoshi and the Mysterious Book for the Nintendo Switch 2.